AVOID HYSTERICAL ATTACKS ON DISTILLERS Incidentally in discussing the drink question there should be none of the hysterical attacks on distillers or other whiskey handlers so long as the trade in which they are engaged is not only declared legal, but actually permitted to contribute tens of millions to the expenses of government, saving from higher taxation every prohibitionist. Confiscation of property should not be advocated. If a man has invested his money with the law's permission and sanction and under government taxation and protection, it is confiscation and dishonesty to take his property from him by legislation or in any other way. It would have been cheaper ten times over to have bought the slaves than to have fought the Civil War. It would be cheap for the government, if it really wants temperance, to buy the distilleries. In conclusion, if you want to preach temperance effectively, make the brewers of beer realize that they are the great distributors of whiskey, responsible for a great part of the drunkenness. The beer that they brew, as Jefferson pointed out, promotes temperance, because it replaces whiskey. But the fortunes that they have built up have been invested in whiskey saloons. Each brewer must see his name in gilt letters over as many saloon doors as any other brewer. So in the big cities there are four saloons on the four corners, and they cannot pay expenses unless their customers drink whiskey, for the whiskey drinker spends all his money in a saloon, where the beer drinker spends twenty cents at most. The brewers have well deserved the cut in their fortunes caused by the temperance movement, for their vanity and bad judgment, multiplying the number of saloons and increasing the sale of whiskey, because so many saloons cannot possibly be run profitably on a beer basis, are responsible for much of the drunkenness. As for the law-makers who snatch at any passing straw of sentiment, building up dives at the soldiers' expense by abolishing the canteen, ready to say offhand that the man tired at night shall drink only water, let them consider Lecky's warning: "Injudicious suppression of amusements that are not wholly good, but which afford keen enjoyment to great masses, seldom fail to give an impulse to other pleasures more secret and probably more vicious." A STUDY OF THE CAUSES OF INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENTS By Gustavus Myers (Reprinted from the American Statistical Quarterly, September, 1915.) Since the adoption by twenty-four states within the last few years of workmen's compensation laws, the opportunities for securing data as to the frequency and causes of industrial accidents. have been greatly increased. Previous to the passage of those laws and of the appointment of commissions to administer them, there was no system in force under which any state received and arranged reports of all accidents taking place in industrial establishments, and this was true of fatal as well as non-fatal accidents. Occasional investigations might be made here and there by special official bodies, but there was no provision for permanent inquiry and report. In at least two branches of the subject—those pertaining to accidents on railroads and in mines-record was kept of accidents, but this was done by Federal officials; in the one case by the Interstate Commerce Commission, in the other by the Bureau of Mines. As for accidents in purely industrial concerns, nothing even approaching an adequate record was kept, and there were neither, requirements nor facilities for keeping any. When, however, the passage of workmen's compensation laws brought permanent commissions into existence, there were created continuing agencies among the functions of which were the assembling and reporting of all necessary data. Necessarily, each of these commissions, operating under differing laws, produces an absence of uniformity, and this applies to specific provisions of law as well as to methods. Some of the commissions will make exhaustive reports while others give no detailed statistics, but so far content themselves with reporting merely the main outline of facts. In some states a system of the most thorough reporting and tabulation has been put in operation under the supervision of skilled statisticians; in other states this system has not yet been introduced. Nevertheless, making full allowance for these deficiencies, there is already supplied a mass of data affording certain authentic information. If there is any one phase of the matter of industrial accidents long a prolific source of conjecture, contention, and `extravagant assertions of one kind or another, it has been that regarding the factors causing them. What proportions are due to inherent risks of industry, and what to personal fault? Approximately what percentage is chargeable to employers, and what to employes? To what extent do unsafe machinery, lack of proper safeguards, flying objects, perilous speeding up, and other factors, on the one hand, and on the other, personal carelessness, enter into the causative nature of industrial accidents? Upon one or more or all of these questions various assumptions have been and are still being made. The data at hand in the official reports are manifestly not conclusive of the situation in the United States as a whole. Much of it, too, is incomplete and requires further elucidation. Still, there remains a valuable body of reliable statistics containing significant essentials well worthy of consideration. When, in 1908, Frederick L. Hoffman, basing his estimate upon the data then available, conservatively placed the number of deaths due to industrial accidents at 30,000 to 35,000 a year, and casualties of all kinds in the United States at 2,000,000 annually, the assumption was advanced that at least 50 per cent of these mortalities and injuries "were the direct result of the occupational risk." These figures, published in Bulletin No. 78 of the U. S. Bureau of Labor, September, 1908, attracted widespread attention. In Bulletin No. 157, issued by the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in March, 1915, Mr. Hoffman concludes, after an exhaustive consideration of the returns, that "There are approximately 82,520 deaths per annum in the United States, from accidents due to all causes, and that of this large number of deaths some 25,000 may safely be assumed to represent the loss of life directly due to occupational activity, chiefly in connection with the carrying on of dangerous industries, all of which are typical of the economic necessities of modern life." The estimate by Carl M. Hansen, Secretary |